If a car is a dynamic creature, if it's about taking you from where you are to where you need to be and making your hair tingle in the process, then a muscle car is the ultimate expression of that form. A muscle car is about, as the name might suggest, the muscle - it is there because of its engine. Yes, there are lots of other fiddly bits that keep the wheels on the ground, make the windows go up and down and tell people when you're turning left, but the engine is the living, beating heart of the thing.

And in a muscle car, the chassis, the wheels, the wires, electronic gizmos and you, the driver, are there to tend to the engine's needs - to nurture it, nourish it, flatter it and give it all that it demands to go about the business of firing you towards the horizon. Ideally without a big fire. They are about power. And power, in whatever form, has been perhaps the single most alluring thing for human beings since the moment we crawled out of the primaeval ooze and threw a spear at a mammoth.